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Saturday, July 21, 2007

Groundnut, Apios Americana

What a find! We were out picking berries when I discovered the most exquisite curling plant at my feet. It was twisting and twirling itself all around the berry bushes and stalky plants, donning these spikes of reddish purple nealrly orchid like blossoms. Who wouldn't be enraptured? They are something right out of a Shakespeare sonnet, or a faery otherworld.

Turns out that you can actually harvest the tubers for a very good food, or eat the seedpods (they are in the pea family like peanuts and clover) but I don't know that I would have the heart to pull any of it up. I'd rather have more of it growing!